After 23 years behind the wheel, Amanda Haworth made one of the biggest bets of her life — on herself.
“Even though people put titles on things, like ‘only men should drive a truck, or only women should do this,’ you can do whatever you want if you put your mind to it.”
Amanda Haworth, Highmark Health
Haworth started driving commercial trucks when she was 21 years old after dropping out of community college to help support her mom. For more than two decades, she was good at it — no accidents, on-time deliveries. She was the kind of driver companies don’t want to lose, but in her early 40s, she knew it was time to make a change.
“This was a big risk for me,” Haworth told Technical.ly. “I left a career that I’d been in for over 20 years, making really good money, and I went down to working [two jobs] and going to school full-time as well.”
The South Hills resident said she always loved tech, but didn’t know how to make that passion a career until a serendipitous ad came across her social media feed for a free local tech upskilling program called Per Scholas. Haworth almost kept scrolling, convinced it was a scam, but it wasn’t.
About four months after enrolling, she completed the IT Support program and landed a role as an IT system analyst at Highmark Health.
Haworth said she balanced the program’s demands by not going at it alone. Her wife and little sister were her anchors through the uncertainty of starting over in her 40s.
“It truly takes a village,” she said. “I wanted to make a better life for us.”
Now, as a queer woman who has spent her entire career in male-dominated spaces, she wants others to know that paths like hers exist — and how they can get there.
In this edition of Technical.ly’s How I Got Here series, Haworth shares what she learned as a commercial truck driver, how her life is different since studying at Per Scholas and the advice she would give others looking to make a change.
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you know it was time for a career change?
Within the last three to five years, I really started thinking that maybe if I can get into a position with a company that allows some type of growth, maybe I can get out of the truck and learn the other side of things.
In the trucking industry, they keep you in that seat because they don’t want to have to keep replacing drivers, especially ones that are good at what they do. So, I didn’t get a lot of opportunities for growth.
I had a lot of my friends who would call me up to ask for help with setting up their iPhones or their Xbox, because I’m also a gamer, and I would get excited.
My interest in tech has always been there, and I’ve always enjoyed learning about new technology. But Per Scholas really ignited that passion for me, because I didn’t know how deep rooted it was until I took that class.
Why did you choose an upskilling program over a traditional university?
The program made it a little bit easier for me to quickly get into a new career, instead of having to take off four years for college. Instead, I quit my trucking job and took off a few months, and here I am in a better situation.
What did you learn as a commercial truck driver that you still carry with you today?
Especially when I started driving trucks, if I saw 100 truck drivers in a week, probably one or two of them were women. You would see another female truck driver, and you’d get excited.
I learned that even though people put titles on things, like ‘only men should drive a truck, or only women should do this,’ you can do whatever you want if you put your mind to it, and just take your time, learn your skill.
What does an average day in your new role look like?
I start my shift at 6 a.m. I go in and check all my emails and team stuff, and then I start getting devices ready.
We could have 50 devices to deploy to a hospital, for example. So I do the prep work, like getting the cases ready and hooking them up to the power banks. Then, throughout the day, we’re getting ready to ship out these devices to different hospitals. We’re building the iPads and MacBooks, repairing anything that’s broken or old, or properly disposing of devices.
My boss is amazing. So, I do my eight hours and get done by 2 p.m. I’m usually home by 2:30 p.m., beating the traffic going into downtown and coming out.
What advice would you give others who identify with your story?
Give yourself grace always and just keep pushing forward.
You can do anything you want to do. It doesn’t matter what your orientation is or what your gender is, if that’s something that you’re passionate about, keep striving, remain humble and don’t stop learning.
This experience has allowed me to realize that when I was in high school, I’d get up every morning excited to learn something. Per Scholas ignited that for me again. Now, even in my free time, I love to learn. Like, I was on Coursera learning about cybersecurity right before we started talking.
So don’t give up on yourself. You’re not going to understand everything right away, but that’s okay. Reach out, connect with people, ask questions and bet on yourself, because before I did this, I didn’t bet on myself.
